The Eastern Coatings Show opened May 15th with a poolside networking reception at Harrah’s Casino. The next day the show formally commenced with an exhibition featuring more than 150 exhibitors and a technical session.

Now in its third year, the biennial Eastern Coatings Show has demonstrated impressive growth. This year’s show had approximately 1,200 attendees, which surpassed the expectations of the Eastern Coatings Federation, who organized the show.

“We anticipated growth, but the show is growing far better than we expected,” said Bob Whiteley, vice president marketing & sales at JNS-Smithchem LLC. “The number of people attending the technical papers has been really high, and attendance has surpassed the 2015 show.”

Technical Program

The Eastern Coatings Show featured an impressive technical program that was comprised of 44 speakers and three concurrent tracks covering UV curing, resin technology, additives, colors and pigments, pigment dispersions, functional fillers and resins. In addition, a Coatings Short Course was presented in cooperation with the University of Southern Mississippi School of Polymers and Higher Performance Materials.

“This impressive program presents a valuable opportunity for attendees to gain exposure to the latest trends and technology in all these areas as they relate to the paints and coatings and allied industries,” said David White, Technical Committee chairman. “The Eastern Coatings Show has exceeded our expectations. All of the technical talks have been full, and the short course had very good attendance. Traffic on the show floor has been excellent.”

Awards and honors

Members of the Eastern Coatings Show board of directors honored Rick Mazzarello, president of Enrichem Specialties with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

To further industry innovation, the Pflaumer Honors for Innovation Awards for new coating technology were presented to honor and recognize the top two technical papers showing the most outstanding technical innovation. Bob Lin of Evonik Industries was honored for his presentation on “Novel Synthetic Silica Matting Agent for Polyaspartic Coatings.” Paul Fithian of Bruggemann Chemical was also recognized for his presentation on “Using Redox Reactions in Emulsion Polymerization to Reduce Free Monomer After the Main Polymerization.”

“We are excited about being the sponsor for the third Eastern Coatings Show and to give these awards for papers showing outstanding technical innovation,” said Harley McNair, president of Pflaumer Brothers.

Commenting on the final day of the show Daniel T. Canavan III, vice president of D.B. Becker, a Maroon Group LLC Company and president of the Eastern Coatings Federation said, “The show has been fantastic this year. We’ve had record attendance and the technical sessions have been so well attended. Our goal and objective here is really for the chemists and other technical folks to come, learn and share. My expectations have been fulfilled. We are excited for 2019.”

For more information on the Eastern Coating Show,  go to  www.easterncoatingsshow.com.